Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2007

[ ... ]

There is a specific sentence under consideration.  Here it is again:
""It is the career opportunities, the nurturing opportunities, the
events that you get to participate in, and the friends that you get
to make for a lifetime that differentiates [sic] this program."  The
OP asked whether "differentiates" is wrong, and of course it is, and I
explained why -- probably at more length than was necessary.

That particular sentence, be it noted, begins "It is," and, as in many
sentences with that beginning, "it" is the dummy subject but not the
true one.  In questions beginning "What is it that ...,' "what" is the
subject, the true subject, and "it" is a predicate nominative.  In
sentences of that form. "that" and all that follows make up a
dependent clause modifying "it."  I suppose there may be other ways to
analyze "What is it that ..." questions,  but I don't think you'll
find that "it" is the dummy subject in any of them.[1]  Note also that
in the original example, there's a long true subject between "it" and
"that," whereas in the "What is it that ... " question there's no such
true subject, only "what" and "it" and the modifying dependent clause.

I was talking only about the "It is <true subject>" form, which is the
specific form the OP asked about.  Other forms, other analyses.

[1]  Maybe you prefer to call "it" the true subject and "what" a
dummy.  But no matter how you parse, "it" can't be the dummy subject
in that sort of sentence.

Robert Lieblich wrote:

[ ... ]

Yes, you could not.

Actually, the answer is both yes and no.  Here is that sentence yet
again: "It is the career opportunities, the nurturing opportunities,
the events that you get to participate in, and the friends that you
get to make for a lifetime that differentiates [sic] this program."
If you replace "It" as dummy subject with "There" and change the verb
from "is" to "are," what you get is unidiomatic.  But, strangely
enough, if you use "There are" to indicate the location of something,
rather than as dummy subject, the same sentence becomes idiomatic.
But that makes this particular sentence quite implausible, because now
you're metaphorically pointing at all the items that follow "There
are," and that collection of items isn't sitting there, even
metaphorically, for anyone to point at.  Compare: "There are the ten
paintings that I bought at the auction," which has the same structure,
including the use of "there" to indicate location rather than as dummy
subject.

It's a slippery area of usage, because whether something is idiomatic
or not depends at least in part on the semantic meaning of its
component parts.

I thought I knew where you could find a good online article about
this, but I'm unable to turn one up.  Maybe someone else can help.

You don't need me, Your Honor. Your analysis is fuller and more
convincing than mine would be. I agree with you fully here: the
plural verb is called for, even in spoken English, but we know that
speakers lose the threads of their sentences -- especially the long
and rambling ones -- when they speak and make these understandable
errors.

How can one dissent from comedy? If Pat meant what he said, then he's
playing Yorick for the bathroom mirror. I see it as a simple American
slap ("aluminiumism" rather than "irony") at the "firstly," etc.
convention.